University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
CONCLUSION.

Lucy Hooper.

Leaving Balt to tell the court in his own way the
particulars of his first encounter in the forest, we
will take up his story from the moment when the
broken revelation of the wounded Bettys prompted
the woodsman to hurry back to the Hawksnest,
where he had deposited the papers of the deceased
Mr. Fenton, as mentioned in the twelfth chapter of
the second book of this authentic history.

As Balt approached the neighbourhood of the
Hawksnest, he found the whole country in alarm.
A runner had been despatched from Fort Stanwix,
warning the people of that bold and extraordinary
inroad of a handful of refugees which took place
early in the summer of 1778, when, swelling their
ranks by the addition to their number of more than
one skulking outlaw and many secret Tories, who
had hitherto continued to reside upon the Mohawk,
the royalists succeeded in carrying off both booty
and prisoners to Canada, disappearing from the valley
as suddenly as they came.

Teondetha was the agent who brought the news

of the threatened incursion, but the movements of
the refugees were so well planned that they managed
to strike only those points where the warning came
too late. They were heard of at one settlement,
when they had already slaughtered the men, carried
off the women and children, and burned another;
and, indeed, so rapid were their operations, that
the presence of these destroyers was felt at a dozen
different points almost simultaneously. They were
first seen in their strength near Fort Hunter; they
desolated the farmhouses between there and “Fonda's
Bush,” swept the remote settlements upon
either side of their northern progress, and finally disappeared
at the “Fish-house” on the Sacondaga.

The historian seems to have preserved no trace
of their being anywhere resisted, so astounding was
the surprise of the country people at this daring invasion;
but tradition mentions one instance at least
where their inroad received a fatal check.

Balt, who, as we have said, was hurrying to the
Hawksnest to procure the papers which, while clearing
the fair fame of Alida, have already given so
important a turn to the trial of Greyslaer, instantly
claimed the aid of Teondetha to protect the property
of his friend in the present exigence; and, with
Christian Lansingh and two or three others, these experienced
border warriors threw themselves into the
mansion, and prepared to defend it until the storm
had passed by.

Nor was the precaution wasted; for their preparations
for defence were hardly completed, the lapse
of a single night passed away, when, with the morrow's
dawn, a squad of Tory riders was seen galloping
across the pastures by the river-side, with no
less a person than Walter Bradshawe himself, now
well-mounted and completely armed, riding at their
head. He had fallen in with these brother partisans

while trying to effect his escape across the frontier,
obtained the command of a dozen of the most desperate
among them, and readily induced his followers,
by the hope of booty, to make an attack upon the
Hawksnest. Whether the belief that Alida was
still dwelling there induced him to make one more
desperate effort to seize her person, or whether he
only aimed at striking some daring blow ere he left
the country in triumph—a blow which would make
his name a name of terror long upon that border—
it is now impossible to say. But there, by the cold
light of early dawn, Balt soon distinguished him at
the head of his gang of desperadoes.

Early as was the hour, Teondetha had already
crept out to scout among the neighbouring hills; and
Balt, aware of his absence, felt now a degree of
concern about his fate which he was angry at himself
at feeling for a “Redskin;” though somehow,
almost unknowingly, he had learned to love the
youth. He had, indeed, no apprehension that the
Oneida had been already taken by these more than
savage men; but as the morning mist, which rolled up
from the river, had most probably hitherto prevented
Teondetha from seeing their approach, Balt feared
that he might each moment present himself upon
the lawn in returning to the house, and catch the
eye of Bradshawe's followers while unconscious of
the danger that hovered near.

The scene that followed was, however, so quickly
over, that the worthy woodsman had but little time
for farther reflection.

Bradshawe had evidently expected to obtain possession
of the house before any of the family had
arisen or warning of his approach was received;
and, dividing his band as he neared the premises,
a part of his men circled the dwelling and galloped
up a lane which would lead them directly across

the lawn toward the front door of the house, while
the rest, wheeling off among the meadows, presented
themselves at the same time in the rear.

The force of Balt was too small to make a successful
resistance against this attack, had the Tories
expected any opposition, or had they been determined
to carry the house even after discovering that it
was defended. His rifles were so few in number
that they were barely sufficient to defend one side
of the house at a time; and, though both doors and
windows were barricaded, the woodsman and his
friends could not long have sustained themselves under
a simultaneous assault upon each separate point.

Balt, however, did not long hesitate how to receive
the enemy; his only doubt seemed to be, for
the moment, which party would soonest come within
reach of his fire.

“Kit Lansingh,” he cried, the instant he saw the
movement from his look-out place in the gable, “look
ye from the front windows, and see if the gate that
opens from the lane upon the lawn be closed or no.
Quick, as ye love yere life, Kit.”

“The gate's shut. They slacken their pace—they
draw their bridles—they fear to leap,” shouted Kit
the next instant in reply. “No—they leap; ah!
it's only one of them—Bradshawe; but he has not
cleared it; the gate crashes beneath his horse; his
girths are broken; and now they all dismount to let
their horses step over the broken bars.”

“Enough, enough, Kit. Spring now, lads, to the
back windows, and each of you cover your man as
the riders from the meadows come within shot.
But, no! never mind taking them separately,” cried
Balt, as his party gained the windows. “Not yet,
not yet; when they double that corner of fence.
Now, now, as they wheel, as they double, take them
in range. Are you ready? Let them have it.”

A volley from the house as Balt spoke instantly
emptied several saddles; and the on-coming troopers,
recoiling in confusion at the unexpected attack,
turned their backs and gained a safe distance as
quickly as possible.

“Now, lads,” shouted Balt, “load for another
peppering in the front;” and already the active borderers
have manned the upper windows on the opposite
side of the house.

But the assailants here, startled by the sound of
firearms and the rolling smoke which they see issuing
from the rear of the house, hang back, and
will not obey the behests of their leader, who vainly
tries to cheer them on to the attack. In vain does
Bradshawe coax, conjure, and threaten. His followers
have caught sight of their friends drawing off
with diminished numbers toward the end of the
house. They see the gleaming rifle-barrels protruding
through the windows. They cluster together,
and talk eagerly for a moment, unheeding the
frantic appeals of their leader; and now, with less
hesitation than before, they have leaped the broken
barrier of the gate, and are in full retreat down the
lane.

“One moment, one moment, boys; it's a long
shot, but we'll let them have a good-by as they turn
off into the pasture. Ah, I feared it was too far for
the best rifle among us,” added Balt, as the troopers,
apparently untouched by the second volley, still galloped
onward.

“God's weather! though, but that chap on the
roan horse has got it, uncle,” cried Lansingh, the
next moment, as he saw a horseman reel in the saddle,
while others spurred to his side, and upheld the
wounded man. “My rifle against a shot-gun that
that chap does not cross the brook.”

“To the window in the gable then, boys, if you

would see the Tory fall,” exclaimed Balt, as the
flying troopers became lost to their view from the
front windows. “Tormented lightning! you've lost
your rifle, Kit; they are all over the brook.”

“No, there's a black horse still fording it,” cried
Lansingh, eagerly. “It's Bradshawe's horse; I
know it from the dangling girths he drags after
him. He has gained the opposite bank; his horse
flounders in the slippery clay; no, he turns and
waves his hand at something. He sees us; he
waves it in scorn. Oh! for a rifle that would bring
him now.”

And, even as Lansingh spoke, the sharp report
of a rifle, followed by a sudden howl of pain and
defiance, rung out on the still morning air. The
trooper again rises in his saddle and shakes his
clenched fist at some unseen object in the bushes.
The next moment he disappears in a thicket beyond;
and now, again, the black horse has emerged
once more into the open fields; but he scours along
the slope beyond, bare-backed and masterless; the
saddle has turned, and left the wounded rider at the
mercy of that unseen foe!

Not five minutes could have elapsed before Balt
and his comrades had reached the spot where
Bradshawe disappeared from their view; but the
dying agonies of the wounded man were already
over; and, brief as they were, yet horrible must have
been the exit of his felon soul. The ground for
yards around him was torn and muddled with his
gore, as if the death-struggles of a bullock had been
enacted there. His nails were clutched deep into
the loamy soil, and his mouth was filled with the
dust which he had literally bitten in his agony.
The yeomen gazed with stupid wonder upon the
distorted frame and muscular limbs—so hideously
convulsed when the strong life was leaving them—

and one of them stooped to raise and examine the
head, as if still doubtful that it was the terrible
Bradshawe who now lay so helpless before them.
But the crown of locks had been reft from the gory
scull, and the face (as is known to be the case with
a scalped head) had slipped down, so that the features
were no longer visible.

The next moment the Oneida emerged from the
bushes with a couple of barbarous Indian trophies
at his belt; and subsequent examination left not a
doubt that both Bradshawe and the other wounded
trooper had been despatched by the brave but demi-savage
Teondetha.

Such were the essential particulars of Bradshawe's
real fate, as now made known by him who
beheld his fall.

The court had given an order for the instant release
of the prisoner, and the clerk had duly made
it out long before the narrative of the worthy woodsman
was concluded; but the relation of Balt excited
a deep sensation throughout that crowded chamber,
and the presiding judge for some moments
found it impossible to repress the uproarious enthusiasm
with which this full exculpation of the prisoner
at the bar was received by the spectators.
Those who were nearest to the prisoner—the members
of the bar and other gentlemen—the whole
jury in a body, rose from their seats and rushed
forward to clasp his hand; and it was only Greyslaer
himself who could check the excitement of the
multitude and prevent them from bearing him off
in triumph upon their shoulders. His voice, however,
at last stilled the tumult, so that a few words
from the bench could be heard. They were addressed,
not to the prisoner, but to Balt himself.

“And pray tell me, my worthy fellow,” said the
judge, with moistened eyes, “why you did not,

when first called to the stand, testify at once to the
impossibility of this Bradshawe having fallen by the
hand of our gallant friend, for whose unmerited sufferings
not even the triumphant joy of this moment
can fully compensate? Why did you not arrest
these most painful proceedings the moment it was
in your power?”

“And yere honour don't see the caper on't, raaly?
You think I might have got Major Max out of this
muss a little sooner by speaking up at onct, eh?
Well, I'll tell ye the hull why and wherefore, yere
honour;” and the worthy woodsman, laying one
brown and brawny hand upon the rail before him,
looked round with an air of pardonable conceit at
finding such a multitude of well-dressed people
hanging upon his words, cleared his throat once or
twice, and thus bespoke himself:

“I owned a hound onct, gentlemen, as slick a
dog as ever you see, any on ye; for the like o' that
brute was not in old Tryon; and one day, when
hunting among the rocky ridges around Konnedieyu,[7]
or Canada Creek, as some call it, I missed the
critter for several hours. I looked for him on the
hathes above, and I clomb down into the black
chasm, where the waters pitch, and leap, and fling
about so sarcily, and sprangle into foam agin the
walls on airy side. It was foolish, that's a fact, to
look for him there; for the eddies are all whirlpools;
and if, by chance, he had got into the stream, why,
instead of being whirled about and chucked on
shore, as I hoped for, the poor critter would have
been sucked under, smashed on the rocky bottom,
and dragged off like all natur. And so I thought
when I got near enough for my eyes to look fairly
into those black holes, with a twist of foam around

them, that seemed to screw, as it were, right down
through the yaller water of Konnedieyu.

“But now I hears a whimper in the bushes above
me. I looks up to the top of the precipice against
which I'm leaning, and there, on a ledge of rock
about midway, what do I see but the head of the
very hound I was in sarch of peering out from the
stunted hemlocks that grew in the crevices. To
holp him from below was impossible; so I went
round and got to the top of the hathe. The dog
was now far below me, and it was a putty risky business
to let myself down the face of the cliff to the
ledge where he was. The critter might get up to
me full as easily as I could get down to him; for
here and there were little sloping zigzag cleets of
rock broad enough for the footing of a dog, but
having no bushes near by which a man could steady
his body while balancing along the face of the cliff.
They leaned over each other, too, with breadth
enough for a dog to pass between, but not for a man
to stand upright.

“I whistled to the dog: `Why in all thunder does
the old hound not come up when I call?' says I to
myself, says I. `By the everlasting hokey, if he
hasn't got one foot in a painter[8] trap,' said I the next
moment, as I caught sight of the leather thong by
which some Redskin had fixed the darned thing to
the rock. I ups rifle at onct, and had hand on trigger
to cut the string with a bullet. `Stop, old Balt,
what are ye doing?' says I agin afore I let fly.
`The dumb brute, to be sure, will be free if you
clip that string at onçt, as you know you can. But
the teeth of the trap have cut into his flesh already;
will you run the chance of its farther mangling him,
and making the dog of no valu to any one by letting

him drag that cursed thing after him when he gets
away? No! rayther let him hang on there a few
moments as he is, till you can go judgmatically to
work to free him.' With that I let the suffering
critter wait until I had cut down a tree, slanted it
from the top of the cliff to the ledge where he lay,
got near enough to handle him, uncoiled the leather
thong that had got twisted round him, sprung the
trap from his bleeding limb, and holped him to some
purpose.

“Now, yere honour, think ye that, if I had not
waited patiently till all this snarl about Miss Alida
had been disentagled afore Major Max got free,
he would not have gone away from this court with
something still gripping about his heart, as I may
say; something to which the steel teeth of that
painter trap, hows'ever closely they might set, were
marciful, as I may say? Sarting! sarting he would.
But now every one has heard here all that man,
woman, and child can say agin her. And here, in
open court, with all these book-larnt gentlemen, and
yere honour at their head, to sift the business, we've
gone clean to the bottom of it, and brought out her
good name without a spot upon it.”

We will leave the reader to imagine the effect
which this homely but not ineloquent speech of the
noble-minded woodsman produced upon the court,
upon the spectators, and upon him who was most
nearly interested in what the speaker said.

The reader must imagine, too, the emotions of
Alida when Max and she next met, and Greyslaer
made her listen to the details of the trial from the
lips of his deliverer; while Balt, pausing ever and
anon as he came to some particular which he scarcely
knew how to put in proper language for her ears,
would at last get over the difficulty by flatly asserting
that he “disremembered exactly what the bloody

lawyer said jist at this part, but the major could tell
her that in by-times.”

Those by-times, as Balt so quaintly called them,
those sweet and secret interchanges of heart with
heart, that full and blessed communion of prosperous
and happy love, came at last for Max and Alida.

They were wedded in the autumn, at that delicious
season of our American climate when a second
spring, less fresh, less joyous than that of the
opening year, but gentler, softer, and—though the
herald of bleak winter—less changeable and more
lasting, comes over the land; when the bluebird
comes back again to carol from the cedar top, and
the rabbit from the furze, the squirrel upon the chestnut
bough, prank it away as merrily as when the
year was new; when the doe loiters in the forest
walk as the warm haze hides her from the hunter's
view, and the buck admires his antlers in the
glassy lake which the breeze so seldom ripples;
when Nature, like her own wild creatures, who conceal
themselves in dying, covers her face with a
mantle so glorious that we heed not the parting life
beneath it. They were wedded, then, among those
sober but balmy hours, when love like theirs might
best receive its full reward.

Thenceforward the current of their days was as
calm as it had hitherto been clouded; and both Max
and Alida, in realizing the bounteous mercies which
brightened their after lives, as well as in remembering
the dark trials they had passed through; the fearful
discipline of the character of the one, the brief
but bitter punishment of a single lapse from virtue
in the other—that Heaven-sent punishment, which
but heralded a crowning mercy—both remained
henceforth among those who acknowledge

Our story ends here. The fate of the other characters
who have been principally associated in its
progress is soon told. Isaac Brant, as is related in
the biography of his father, perished ultimately by
the hand of that only parent, whose life he had several
times attempted, and who thus most singularly
wrought out the curse which the elder De Roos
had pronounced against him in dying. Of Thayendanagea,
or Brant himself, we need say nothing
farther here, as the full career of that remarkable
person is sufficiently commemorated elsewhere.
The two Johnsons must likewise at this point be
yielded up to the charities of the historians who have
recorded their ruthless deeds throughout the Valley
of the Mohawk in the subsequent years of the war.
The redoubtable Joe Bettys did not close his career
quite so soon as might have been expected from the
disastrous condition in which we last left him; but,
recovering from his wound under the care of the
presumed teamster to whom Balt had intrusted
him, and who turned out to be a secret partisan of
the faction to which Bettys belonged, the worthy
Joe made his escape across the frontier. He lived
for some years afterward, and, after committing
manifold murders and atrocities, he finally finished
his career upon the scaffold at the close of the war.
The striking incidents of his capture are told elsewhere
with sufficient minuteness.[9] Old Wingear
was attainted as a traitor, and died of mortification
from the loss of his property. Syl Stickney, the only
Tory, we believe, yet to be disposed of, attempted
once or twice to desert to his old friends, considering
himself bound for the time for which he had enlisted,

though both Bradshawe, his leader, and Valtmeyer,
who had enlisted him, were dead. When
the term expired, however, he did not hesitate to
join the Whigs, with whom he fought gallantly till
the close of the war, and received a grant of land in
the western part of the state for the active services
he rendered in Sullivan's famous campaign against
the Indian towns. It was doubtless this Sylla and
his brother Marius, who, calling each a settlement
after themselves, set the example of giving those
absurd classic names to our western villages, which
have cast such an air of ridicule over that flourishing
region of the state of New-York.

It remains only to speak of the affectionate-hearted
Balt, whose only foible, if so it may be called,
was, that he never could abide a Redskin. His
nephew, Christian Lansingh, marrying the gentle
Tavy Wingear, succeeded to the public-house of
her father after the attainder of the hypocritical deacon
had been reversed in his favour. And there, by
the inn fireside, long after the war was over, old
Balt, with pipe in mouth, used to delight to fight his
battles over for the benefit of the listening traveller.
The evening of his days, however, was spent chiefly
at the Hawksnest. Greyslaer, soon after his marriage,
had embraced the tender of a mission to one
of the southern courts of Europe, with which government
honoured him. The health of Alida had
been seriously impaired by her mental sufferings;
and though loath to relinquish the active part he had
hitherto taken in the great struggle of his country,
Max was glad to be able to devote himself in a different
way to her interests, where Alida would have
the benefit of a more genial clime. But in the
peaceful years that followed his return, many was
the pleasant hunt, many the loitering tour that he
and old Balt had together among the romantic hills

and bright trout-streams to the north of his demesnes;
and many the token of kindness from Alida
to the Spreading Dew, which Max carried with him
on these excursions, when the rapid disappearance
of game in his own level country induced Teondetha
to shift his wigwam to these mountain solitudes.

Of Guisbert or Guise, as the “Bois-brulé,” or
half-blood child was generally called, we have as
yet been enabled to gather but few traditions; but
we may perhaps make farther attempts to trace his
fortunes, and possibly hereafter present the reader
with the result of our researches in another tale of
The American Border.